Such a method of fuel optimized selection is known for example from U.S. Pat. No. 6,347,262 B1 for the case of a spin-stabilized spacecraft. A configuration of thrusters on a spacecraft, as considered by the present invention, serves in particular the attitude and position correction of the spacecraft. Such an attitude and position correction via the thrusters is known for example from EP 0 750239 A2.
From EP 0 977 687 we know of a special method for the low-fuel control of an arrangement of thrusters on a spacecraft, wherein for the purpose of finding a low-fuel solution for the control of a convex linear optimization problem is resolved through                an initialization phase for finding a first permissible solution to the linear optimization problem and        a subsequent iteration phase, in which, proceeding on the permissible solution to the linear optimization problem, an iterative optimization of an effectiveness criterion takes place.        
In this method a dual simplex algorithm is applied, which is supposed to find an optimal solution to the problem through a largely unfocused search method, wherein however it is possible with this method that there is no solution for the currently existing force-momental vector and the present thruster arrangement.
From N. Karmakar: A new polynominal time algorithm for linear programming, Combinatorica 4 (4), 1984, p. 373–395 we know of a basic method for solving linear optimization problems of a general form.